Mass Effect: Cipher
by mk0008
Summary: Secrets? technology? a little of a possible future? will these things keep someone sane, or will it drive someone insane? it hardly matters, all that matters is to do what must be done to preserve the future. OC insert blend
1. Arrival

Cipher

 **Location: unknown**

 **Time: unknown**

 **Status: unconscious**

Pain.

That was the first thing that went through her mind, and not a normal pain, a stabbing pain in the head that causes a person to not be able to think clearly. A migraine is not entirely dissimilar from what she felt at that time; however, this pain had neither the sensitivity to light nor the nausea that comes with it.

After a small fraction of a second however, the pain was gone and she decided to take in her surroundings.

She was in a field, a field of some sort of grain. The planet's star was high in the sky signaling the time of day on this planet as most likely being noon or midday. Looking around more she noticed the layout of the field of what looked like wheat: it was well organized, had a very advanced but unrecognizable irrigation system. "This is probably not a society of primitives" she thought to herself. Taking stock of herself, she noticed that she was wearing her uniform, which consisted of a grey shirt with an officer's jacket, grey trousers, and black boots with a visible steel toe on the outside. An unassuming outfit in certain circles to be sure, but for someone of her occupation it would be what would be expected of her to wear. Looking around beyond the edge of the field felt a bit of disappointment as she saw the wooden house, causing her to rethink her earlier assessment of the strange planet she had now found herself on.

"They probably have advanced farming technology but little else" she said out loud, as she also saw a windmill as the power source for the humble home as well as a water tower.

Thinking of home she suddenly remembered that she had no idea where her ship was as well as if she was armed or not. Checking her inventory again quickly revealed that she was indeed armed with her pistol and her scoped rifle. With a slight bit of relief she then checked her data pad to see if she still had her ship and where it was, (she liked to have a tracker on it with a highly encrypted cipher on it to prevent theft) with a huge sigh of relief she found that indeed she did have her ship and that it was nearby. Deciding to go to her ship and find out what planet she was on she got up, But as soon as she put her hands on the ground to get up she heard a loud bang and a scream from what sounded like a young woman not quite fully matured.

"Oh, not again!" she said loudly. Not that she knew exactly what was going on, but she was not one to hear a scream from a child or youth and not do something about it. Getting up quickly and heading towards the sound and hearing another bang, which happened to come from the "probably primitive" house that she saw, she checked her rifle to see if she had enough ammo to stop whatever mischief that these housebreakers wanted to do.

Arriving at the house, she noticed with horror that there was a corpse of a young mature human woman of no more than thirty with really red hair that lay in a pool of blood on the floor of the porch. Seeing this and thinking something terrible happened she hurried into the building to see that there was a human man bleeding from the temple standing in front of a young girl of about fifteen who looked so much like the man, aside from the red hair of the dead woman outside, that she had to be his daughter. The young woman was holding her wounded unconscious little brother of about six years old was bleeding from the arm from what appeared to be a puncture wound that could have been from a rather low tech slug thrower or a stab wound. The man was well onto his thirties but could not have been over thirty-eight, had no facial hair, had a short military cut head of dark brown almost black hair had plain blue jeans but was wearing a grey t-shirt with a strange shaped N7 right below his right collarbone and was holding a strange pistol at the housebreakers.

Seeing the three housebreakers she was stunned by quite a few things things. First was that she knew what they were and why they looked how they did, but that paled in comparison with the fact that she did not know _how_ she knew: they were batarians, a race of beings from a planet known as Khar'shan that had a caste system and had a penchant for enslaving innocent people from other races; and they looked like they were employing their despicable trade. Seeing the situation for what it was and knowing exactly what to do she pulled the riffle up and opened fire on the unsuspecting slaver sum that they were and killed all three of them in less than two seconds flat with three shots from her rifle directly in the cerebellum, if the batarian cerebellum was in the same place that most humanoids had them.

"Thank you miss, my entire family and I would be dead if you were here just a few seconds later, I did not know that there were any asari commandos here." Confused, she was just about to ask why he called her an asari commando as she had only an inkling of what that was when his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he lost consciousness.

"Papa!" the little girl screamed. As she set her brother down none too gently and rushed to her father's side.

"Stand back girl" the deadly woman commanded, and immediately as if the girl had been trained to the girl stepped back to allow her family's mysterious savior to approach her father.

She had to work fast she knew it, but she was hesitant to use what medical supplies she had as she did not know if there were more batarians between her and her ship; however, one look on the pleading face of the sixteen year old girl and she knew she would use however much she needed to save this poor girl's father as she had already lost her mother.

So after applying the medical patch to the man's head she turned back you the young girl and told her that her father would live and asked her "do you have a safe place to move him?"

Nodding the girl told the blue woman "yes, we have a safe room in the basement for emergencies."

"Take me to it and I will ensure that you are safe."

After she said this the girl picked up her unconscious brother and led the blue woman down to the basement to the safe room which was sealed off by a pair of sliding metal doors that did not look anything like the rest of the house.

"Huh," the woman thought to herself "I guess these people are not so primitive after all."

The doors were made of a steel coloured metal similar to a starship's hull and had a yellow holographic lock in the center.

Pulling out her Omni-tool ("how do I know that" the woman thought) the girl typed something, the lock turned green, and the door slid open to reveal a well provisioned room with food, three beds, about a half dozen more of strange weapons like the one the man had, and a spare pair of Omni-tools.

"This is quite a place" the woman said to the girl, "what is your name?"

"Anna, Anna Louise Shepard"

At those words, the woman started, for she finally understood how she knew the things that she did. She knew where she was, she knew what year it was, she knew who the young girl was, how old she was, and she knew what she herself just did.

Facing the girl and knowing she could not be found by the alliance marines that were sure to come and investigate she told the girl while bandaging the boy's arm "I need to be gone when the alliance gets here but I want to make sure you and your family are safe. Here is what I am going to do: I am going to lock the door when I leave and encrypt it so the batarians cannot get to you and your family"

"Why do you need to go? Are you in some sort of trouble?" the girl inquired with a little fear in her voice.

"No, I am in no trouble with the alliance, but there are certain people in the alliance that would get me in trouble."

At this the girl frowned.

"Here" the woman reassured the young lady standing up and handing something to her, "here is something that you may find useful someday, don't tell anyone you have it or when I come to retrieve it someone might have stolen it."

"Why should I do this for you? My parents always told me not to trust strangers."

Smiling, the woman said to the girl in a sarcastic tone "oh, only because I saved you, your father, and your brother." In a more soft tone continued, "But to give you some assurance I will tell you my call sign." And leaning down into the girl's ear she whispered her occupational call sign to her, widening her eyes she turned to give the strange blue woman a death glare but was surprised to find her gone and the door closing.

After the door closed the blue woman took out her data pad and started encrypting the door with the strongest encryption she could.

Having secured the young woman's safety, the blue woman headed upstairs, picked up one of the dead batarians' shotguns and taking all three of their Omni-tools she proceeded to head out to her ship.

-Line-

The trip was uneventful as she expected, even though she did dispatch any batarians in groups of three or less with her appropriated batarian shotgun and blades she always had on her. This task was easy because of her skill with stealth and experience in close quarters combat.

Reaching her ship, she was glad to see that no one else had found her it; and lowering the ramp she walked up it and into her ship. Turning right out of the doorway passing her paranoid mechanical butler she headed though the communications room though a hallway passing the sleeping area she arrived at the cockpit. Sitting down in the pilot's chair she wondered where her little copilot was as she activated the ship thrusters and cloak and headed towards space.

Once she achieved geosynchronous orbit she stood up, looked out the window, and saw that the batarian ships were leaving as the alliance ship dropped out of FTL.

"This is certainly a nice mess I've gotten into" she said not expecting to get a reply

Hearing a whistle she smiled and turned to "her little copilot" and said "no G9 I do not think the ascendancy has ships like that" frowning and looking down in a low depressed tone tone she said "I don't think there is anyone I know that has those kinds of ships"

G9 whistled again.

"No, I will be fine I'm just a little depressed"

Another whistle, a low drawn out whistle

"I think we are far from home G9 with no way back; however, we may not be home but at least we still have a purpose"

G9 whistles again more cheerfully this time.

The blue woman smiled "oh, you know, the usual: the security and safety of the galaxy"

A series of beeps and whistles later and the blue military woman replied while showing a smile of genuine happiness despite her current situation "yes, it will be fun: stealth, secrets, and technology that will make the galaxy a much more interesting place." Sighing with slight sadness but mostly anticipation she pulled out her dog tags and looked at the thing she got when she graduated from the academy with high marks in close combat, stealth, ship science, communications science and other areas of non-military technology.

 _ **Commander Vras'Mirsa'Inrokini**_

 _ **Serial number 121-919-90**_

 _ **Chiss Ascendancy starship engineer**_

 _ **Blood type A+**_

 **Location: Midoir orbit**

 **Time: 1537 hours**

 **Status: Alive and uninjured**


	2. Search

**A/N: Thanks for supporting my story. I was rather surprised by the support for this story, to explain this point I will only say that I am actually not a writer, I am an engineering student who got lots of plot ideas from reading other great fics like this one (meaning self inserts and the like) for about a year maybe a year and a half.**

 **Location: Milky Way Galaxy, Gefjun system, Mindoir orbit**

 **Time: 1540 hours GMT**

 **Status: all ship systems functional, cloak engaged, personal status: excited, confused, nervous.**

Personally, she never thought that she would end up like this: Human in mind, Chiss in mind and in body. Thinking about it however, she discovered how amazing and terrible it was at the same time.

How could she be Chiss and human in mind? Well it was simple; she was a personality blend of an intelligence operative of high caliber, and a young woman who was nothing special with maybe one or two notable exceptions. As an intelligence operative, she was well trained in close combat, stealth, precision shooting, improvised explosives, and other things that pertained to the status and requirements as a member of house Inrokini. As a young woman from Barton she was just a girl who grew up at home with her loving parents, numerous siblings, and skills in mathematics and intuitive thinking.

Being a Chiss in body was simple: she was a Chiss. She had blue skin, red irises, and shoulder blade length dark blue hair that bordered on but did not quite reach black. She had reasonably long limbs, not the thin kind that looked like long thin wooden sticks with hands on them, but well-proportioned for being 183cm in height. Her face was pretty, but not Emma Watson pretty (but she was close). Her eyes were of course the typical red, but they were the crimson blood red that could pierce your very soul if she wanted them to. Her ears did not stick out like a sore thumb, but they also did not stick to her head like a fly to fly paper. She had a slightly smaller than average and rounded chin, a not small but not big nose, and cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. In short: she was pretty, but not ravishingly beautiful.

"That wasn't there before"

She was admiring herself in the mirror and she had noticed a small mole at the height of her mouth on the left side of her face near the edge of her jawbone.

G9 beeped, curious as to what she meant by that.

"Oh" the former Chiss intelligence operative replied a bit apprehensively, she was not sure how her little friend would take to her new situation, "it's nothing"

G9 beeped again this time with a curious air, asking a question.

"Well, I think our first move should be to get some information of where we are. I do not think we are anywhere in imperial space or in any space under the jurisdiction or watch of the ascendancy."

G9 beeped another question

"I am not entirely sure. Do you have any ideas?"

G9 replied in an excited ecstatic manner

"Great! We'll check that out"

 **Location: Milky Way Galaxy, Gefjun system, Mindoir surface, just outside the Shepard residence**

 **Time: 1743 hours local time, 1543 hours GMT**

 **Status of alliance patrol: no major injuries, some apprehensive, hoping to find survivors.**

Lieutenant commander David Anderson was angry. No, he was furious, he was furious at himself because he was worried for the safety of the Shepard family. He knew young Hannah Shepard since she was a little girl; strike that she was like family to him, they all were. He was also furious at the batarians; he knew that they were angry at them for "encroaching on their territory" as they believed it. Regardless, he hated slavers, and he never gave any quarter to anyone who claimed to be a slaver.

"Commander!" a young lieutenant was called out to him in a scared tone, he hurried over to his inexperienced subordinate, he was hoping that this was a good reason that the young man was calling him for, there were no survivors in any of the nearby homesteads so he was doubtful that this was good even without the tone of voice that the new officer took.

"What is it Samuel" he shouted as he ran around the house to the front porch.

What he found there caused him to lean against a porch post for support. There she laid, Hannah Shepard, the woman he loved like a niece lay in a pool of blood with a hole in her head. Shaking himself out of his daze, he remembered the rest of her family.

"Search the house! Look for survivors!"

Scattering in all directions, the men started looking for the rest of the family. Anderson did not however, he heard from his old friend and husband to his recently deceased almost niece that there was a recent edition to the house: a safe room/bunker that could withstand a huge amount of punishment and the only way in or out was through the starship grade blast door that one could not cut through without hours of effort and it would require a password to gain access. He was still worried though, he was a good fighter Andrew Shepard was, but he was terrible with technology; there were many jokes passed between the two about that passed between the two about that. He was worried that the safe room could have been hacked open.

He rounded the corner and sighed with relief. The door was closed and the lock was red signaling that there was someone inside and that it could only be opened from the inside.

Going up to the intercom on the outside of the door, he activated the talk button and asked,

"Hello, is anyone in there?"

Nothing happened.

He grew worried and pressed the intercom again.

"Please tell me someone is alive in there"

A few agonizing seconds later there was a reply.

"Hey David, something is up with the security on this thing I can't get it open"

He sighed, relieved to hear that not all of the Shepard family was dead.

"What did you lock yourself in and forget the password" he joked.

"Something must be wrong with the intercom too I cannot hear what you are saying."

Anderson frowned; he must have really done a number on the programing of this door if the intercom was not working. Bringing up his Omni-tool he placed a call to Andrew.

"Did you forget the password?"

"No, it is something of a miracle that this door is still even locked, I was just about to get the security set when all this started, it may have been that asari commando that did it"

"What asari commando?" Anderson asked in confusion, there were no asari on Mindoir.

"There was an asari commando that showed up and saved me Anna and James here. Anna asked if all asari have blue hair but she must have been mistaken; regardless, can you get us out of here? Since I don't have the password and I am terrible with tech you will probably have to hack the door open, Anna tried but she only has a civilian grade Omni-tool and can't get it to open"

"I will try" Anderson replied chuckling.

He then opened his hacking program, "this may take a while" he thought. The asari were more advanced technologically for a reason.

"Not to rush you David, but even though we have enough supplies in here to last days and the beds are not entirely uncomfortable, I don't want to be stuck in here for that long"

Anderson smiled "Patience my young excitable friend, thou shalt soon be free from this terrible cage of steel and concrete that causes thee such distress" he said with no little sarcasm.

"har har" Andrew replied, in an equally sarcastic tone "just get us out, I have something that is very interesting and that might be very useful."

"I am working on it" Anderson reassured, nodding. He was just waiting for his hacking program to show him how long it would take to complete the hack, the program he was using was the best the alliance had, couple that he had the best Omni-tool the alliance had it would at most take a few minutes.

The estimate completed and his eyes widened in surprise at the estimate.

 **Scan complete**

 **Estimated time to hack completion:** 67,192,771 seconds

"I think we will need to cut our way to you."

"Well I am not going anywhere."

 **Location: Milky Way Galaxy, Gefjun system, mass relay orbit**

 **Time: 1607 hours GMT**

 **Status: all ship systems functional, cloak engaged**

The imperial agent was deep in thought. If this worked she could have access to almost any data in the galaxy. G9 had detected a large energy source that also had vast sums of poorly encrypted data passing through it, this was obviously this systems mass relay and as such it would be the travel waypoint/communications hub for all information traveling to and from this system. The idea was simple: scan the incoming data for any navigational data like star charts. That however was not the only thing they would get from the data stream; they were hoping to find data about the general state of the galaxy to find out what their next move should be. However, for the agent, she was also hoping to find some data about element zero and other data she could use to incorporate into her ship, because if her ship ran out of fuel she would be stranded in whatever system she found herself in when she ran out. Her hope was to be able to take advantage of the incredibly large energy potential of the substance to improve if not replace her fuel tanks that might very well not be able to be replenished.

G9 beeped a confirmation of data received.

"Well, what do we have?" she asked her astromech droid.

After a very long series of sounds that make astromech droids so amazing, the agent smiled.

"It's not the best but we can definitely use this" she replied.

The data that passed through was not a map of the entire galaxy; it only listed coordinates of all the systems in alliance space and a few other notable places like Omega and the Citadel, but it also had information on the major races of the galaxy, those being the turians, asari, salarians, humans,(of course) and the batarians (for obvious reasons). Aside from a short not very detailed document on the properties of element zero, most of the data was useless junk ranging from simple documents about the artistic value of some artists works to a doctorate student's dissertation on the biological similarities between breeding varren and breeding some strangely named carnivore from the asari home world of Thessia

"See if you can send a request for more data on this 'element zero' substance. We do not know if we can get more fuel for our ship and if we can I would like to research an alternative just on case we cannot find a fuel source."

G9 made a long drawn out whistle.

"Yea, our situation is that bad"

Confirming her request G9 sent a request to an Alliance shipyard for a few technical documents for element zero so as to be able to facilitate repairs on power systems damaged from the recent raid of the batarian slavers.

This kind of thing continued for the next half hour: G9 sent a request for information to the appropriate Alliance facility for a certain technical document or some Intel on some of the other races until the imperial gent had enough information for the next plan of action.

"Good work G9, plot a course for this Omega place I think I have a plan"

G9 whistled curiously asking what she was going to do and what her plan was.

"We are going to Omega to get some supplies; we will need some element zero to perform the upgrades as well as to experiment with. For right now though I intend on examining these strange tools those batarians had on them as well as more about the weapon tech that they had, maybe I can replicate and improve upon them. This idea to have a holographic data tool on your arm sounds like an inspired idea."

G9 whistled another question, asking how she planned on getting the miracle substance commonly referred to as "eezo."

"Simple," she replied to her tin friend, "we are going to steal it."


	3. Priority Mission: Eezo Acquisition

**A/N: here is another chapter for you to enjoy.**

 **Soberan 123: we will see.**

 **DarkDust27: I am glad that you like it. As to someone recognizing my character, there are makeup methods in the real world where one can look like an alien, But have no fear, there is a sci-fi solution my character has to resolve this issue.**

* * *

 **Location: in hyperspace en route to Omega**

 **Time: 1630 hours GMT**

 **Current activity: Omni-tool analysis, and armament inventory**

Mirsa was smiling; this piece of technology was indeed an inspiration: it was a datapad, medical scanning device, material scanning device, communications tool, holonet browser, and miniature factory all in one. The title of Omni-tool is true to its name: it does practically anything. There was one thing that was missing though: a medi-gel dispenser.

Aside from being able to dispense medi-gel this would be a permanent addition to her arsenal of tools. The main reason for Mirsa's lack of concern was the fact that she had a means to apply bacta patches to wounds and inject it for worse injuries. If all else failed she had a fully operational medical droid programed with over 2 million surgical procedures as well as a bacta submersion tank for rapid recovery from especially traumatic circumstances. This was not to say that she wouldn't install a bacta dispenser onto her new Omni-tool herself.

"Hmm, maybe I should make the bacta a little thicker for the Omni-tool." She though out loud.

G9 whistled a question.

"Oh, G9 are we underway?"

G9 answered in the affirmative and repeated the question.

"I think it would be a good idea for it to be thicker in case I have to apply it without a patch. Maybe I should add a component that will seal wounds off to infection too. This substance has not been in the hands of the ascendancy for very long, and there might be a few new things that can be done with it."

G9 gave an enthusiastic slew of droid noises.

With a light giggle, Mirsa replied "Yes, it is nice to research things 'that don't go boom' occasionally."

"Speaking of things that 'go boom,' what do we have for ship armaments?"

G9 gave the account of armaments with an air of trepidation.

"Well, don't worry about it little buddy. We will be able to manufacture more missiles ourselves, and there is almost assuredly a way to get more gas for blasters. The only problem we might have would be the power packs, which we might be able to solve with this eezo substance."

G9 commented on the necessity of the upcoming mission succeeding.

"Yes, G9 if we do not get some eezo soon, we will be in deep trouble."

 **2 hours later**

'Well, that should do it, now I am set to take on the galaxy' Mirsa thought with a smile.

After two hours of working, she had successfully taken the Omni-tools looted from the batarian slavers and had built a better version of the Cipher Omni-tools that they had. By integrating some hardware from a datapad and increasing the encryption on it to the highest she could in the short jump to Omega, she increased the storage capacity, processing speed, and security by a by nearly twice as much, not the best she could do with the limited time that she had, but it would suffice until she had more time to tinker.

Sadly she had no time to examine the weapons in any true detail. From a cursory glance at them however, she could not recognize them specifically. Thinking about it though, the two major possibilities of what company made these: either Elkoss Combine or the Batarian State Arms. It was more likely to be Elkoss Combine due to the public statements recently aired by news officials reporting on the recent Midoir raid that the batarians were unaffiliated slavers of the terminus systems and not part of the batarian hegemony. Her reasoning for this was that BSA was a company owned solely by the hegemony, and if BSA weapons were found on the slavers the hegemony would be implicated as accomplices to this recent atrocity.

It was not that big of a loss as she still had a good range of armaments, both standard issue for members of imperial intelligence and some not so much. She had her standard issue rifle, an E-11 blaster rifle which was just recently developed in secret and not to be released to the general public. She had a confiscated mandalorian heavy blaster pistol, and last but not least a very secret and very illegal disrupter rifle, which she had outfitted with an anti-theft self-destruct feature. Aside from these weapons she did not have much in the realm of heavy explosives, due to the fact that she was a spy and explosives are not generally very subtle. for ammunition she had plenty of power packs to for all her hand held projectile weapons, as well as a decent amount of gas containers for her blasters; she did not however have more than 5 canisters of gas for her disruptor due to the illegality of the weapon and the very high concentrations of gas required for the weapon to function. In short, she had a blaster rifle, pistol, both of which she had thousands of rounds of ammunition for, and a disruptor rifle with about 25 shots and the jewel of her collection: a lightsaber for cutting where she could not hack.

"Now it is time for some sleep and then to come up with a plan."

 **Location: Omega**

 **Time: 2100 hours GMT**

 **Priority Mission: Eezo Acquisition**

Mirsa stood in the cockpit, a feeling of nervousness permeating her entire being. This would be the first time in a long while that she had to undergo a mission with only a general map of the station and no backup. Stealth was paramount, she had calculated a minimum amount of eezo that she would need, and while it was not a lot she was still nervous about carrying the toxic substance though a lawless station where anything might happen. She needed to upgrade the ships engines fuel efficiency to be able to perform at least 3 more jumps where she would hopefully be able to acquire more from less dangerous sources. With more eezo she would research a way to make a reactor for her ship's engines to be powered from rather than to depend on fuel which she would inevitably run out of.

They were almost there. She had come to the cockpit to get a good look of the station before embarking on what would most definitely be one of her more dangerous missions. She also wanted to indulge in her human side which had never seen a ship exiting hyperspace before. It was strange, she had many memories of both entering and exiting hyperspace from both sets of memories: from experience and from numerous games and movies. She might have been worried for her sanity if she did not have the personal mottos of "Everyone is insane in at least one way. I am just insane in quite a few." and "A little insanity every once in a while can keep you sane."

She snapped her head up from her contemplations; G9 had said that they were coming out of hyperspace.

It was amazing! Normally, one should not be amazed by an action that was commonplace, but with her, both sides enjoyed watching as the blue tunnel of hyperspace eventually slowed down and dissolved into stars and whatever destination that she had arrived at.

"G9, scan the station and see if you can get a map. Also, scan incoming and outgoing transmissions to see if there are any slightly less guarded small shipments of eezo that we can get a piece of."

A few second later G9 replied giving an affirmative on the map and located a small shipment of eezo being traded between a private contractor and the Eclipse mercenary group.

"How many are guarding it?"

G9 gave a number, including the buyer.

"Three mercenaries and the buyer, that should not be too great a risk. How much eezo is in the shipment?"

G9 gave the amount.

"That's good, I do not think I could carry much more than that, and it should suit our purposes. Where is it being stored and when is the deal to be made?"

G9 gave the information.

"Oh you bloody droid! That does not give us much time! Bring the ship around to the far side of the asteroid; we will need to cut through it to get inside without being seen and that is the best way to do it."

G9 gave an apologetic whistle.

"Don't try to apologize." she said, barely containing her anger, it was not his fault that it was so soon "It could not be helped, just get the ship in position. We only have forty-five minutes to get the shipment, give me the data for the transaction location just in case I do not get there in time."

Pointing at the station map she pointed to a section of the asteroid that had a tunnel end right before it penetrated the crust. "There, bring the ship there and I will cut through the crust to access the tunnel."

Starting to run to the cargo bay to arm herself she shouted out to her astromech: "and initiate boarding procedures. I do not want to be sucked into the vacuum of space."

Now, to explain, boarding procedures are when a ship is attempting to board a ship while in space that has a malfunctioning or (rarely the case) a non-existent airlock, and the only way to access said ship is to connect the ship's docking port directly to the hull of the ship and cut through; of chief concern is the need to eliminate the necessity of pressure suits, The docking port gives an airtight seal and digs into the ship's hull. Boarding procedures are not without dangers: if the seal is not perfect both ships will vent atmosphere causing asphyxiation, or if either ship starts moving in the wrong way it could tear off the docking port and strand rescue teams on the derelict ship and vent atmosphere, also causing death by lack of life gasses.

A few seconds later and she was ready. She had her cutting tool ready and she had her weapons, this did not include her disruptor. Stealth was important, but she would not have time to waste on killing people stealthily.

"Are we docked?" she asked her droid with a voice that clearly showed her agitation at the situation.

G9 waited a few more seconds and gave an affirmative.

Not wasting any time for a reply, she opened the airlock and got started cutting the 47cm thick asteroid crust open. She was brought out the lightsaber for this job; she had to get this done as soon as possible.

Thirty-seven long seconds later she was rewarded with the asteroid crust falling inward with a loud boom. Getting right to it, she brought up her new Omni-tool and displayed the map and route to her destination and plunged into the depths of what was most likely "the most wretched hive of scum and villainy" in the galaxy.

* * *

 **25 minutes later, 18 until deadline**

After several minutes and a few close calls of nearly being detected, Mirsa arrived at the warehouse. Frowning, she noticed not one but two obvious flaws in her plan: first there were too many guards at the warehouse, and secondly she did not know what crate her quarry might be in.

"Change of plans G9. We will have to wait for the exchange to happen and steal it then, hopefully it will be in a more remote location from the guards." She also hoped that the buyer was not one that could cause any trouble, but she did not want to jinx it.

ten minutes later, she saw an asari, a salarian, and surprisingly, a turian approach the warehouse and leave it with a small crate. It was surprising to see the turian due to the fact that the eclipse does not generally employ turians; however, it would not surprise her if this was one of maybe less than a handful if not the only one.

Watching her quarry she did not fail to notice that they were all very nervous, despite the fact that all of them had helmets on. It was in the way they walked and looked around as if they were expecting to be ambushed.

"That is strange." she thought out loud, "why are they so nervous? It is only a small crate." Then a terrible thought hit her: maybe that the person who they were selling, trading, or repaying it to could be a very dangerous individual.

"I hope it is just a dangerous mercenary"

Although, knowing her luck recently it was probably something worse. First she wakes up on Mindoir, saves Shepard's father and brother without knowing, arrives at Omega with barely enough time to get her bearings, and now she has to deal with a dangerous buyer that three (presumably) well trained mercenaries are afraid of; with her luck it could end up being Saren Arterius himself.

Deciding that she could not wait for the nervous trio to arrive to the meeting site, she got up to blast them and take a couple bags of the blue super energy substance known as element zero and bid a hasty retreat when the turian spoke out loud to his cohorts with a voice that did not perfectly succeed in hiding his nervousness.

"This is far enough; I do not want to be too far from the others with what our customer can do to us."

His companions stopped without a word and did not question his logic.

Taking stock of the area, she noticed it was a rather defensible position that the trepident trio had decided to take refuge in. It was an alley with nothing in it from the opposite side of the trio, but it had a gap on both sides of the alley where some obviously walled off back doors were just in case they needed to get into some good cover quickly.

Sneaking up behind them and pulling out a flashbang/smoke grenade and priming it so that when they opened the crate to show the buyer the goods she could stun the group long enough to grab some and then make like a banana and split.

"He's here."

Looking towards the buyer, she really had to work not to swear out loud. For there, in the flesh, the bane of existence, hater of humans, and all around textbook example for prejudice stood the person who, the worst her luck could ever conjure was Saren Arterius himself.

"Well scum," he said, not even bothering with tact, "do you have it?"

Ignoring the insult, probably more to fear than anything else, the turian answered in a tone that surprisingly did not sound at all afraid: "yes"

As the mercenaries moved to open the crate Mirsa approached as well, but staying far enough away that her grenade would not affect her when it exploded. Sadly but expectantly, Saren approached as well.

Then it happened, just as they opened the crate her stealth field generator deactivated and Saren saw her and loudly demanded of her "Who are you! Identify yourself scum!" Apparently this is where lady luck decided to give her a break, because it was then the mercenaries who were apparently nervous to the point of irrationality opened fire on the turian spectre, causing a valuable distraction.

Throwing the grenade and shielding her eyes she waited for the sound that would accompany the explosion of the handheld eye blinder.

After the explosion she knew she would have seconds at most, so without hesitating she bolted through the smoke, grabbed two bags that held maybe five kilograms, and turned to leave activating her stealth field generator. Then it seemed that luck decide to turn on her and she got shot just as she turned invisible, thankfully it was in the shoulder but it still hurt and she could have done without it.

It was then that she noticed that in her haste to get here she did not bring any bacta patches with her.

Angry at her own short sightedness, she quickly left the immediate area, got to an abandoned alley, took her loot and put it in a bag she had with her and rummaged through it to find something she could use to staunch the bleeding with. Thankfully and also bizarrely she found that she had her hair towel in her bag, not the best thing for a bandage but it was the best thing she had at the moment.

Having finished her impromptu medical she quickly activated her stealth belt and proceeded to head towards her ship at a fast pace due to the risk of infection that she had from using a dirty hair towel for a bandage.

 **Later**

It took more than three times the length of time to get back to her ship as it did to get to the warehouse, and in that time she realized that she was not feeling to well. Stumbling into her ship, she called in a weak voice to her droid. "Take us to the Citadel G9 and cloak us as soon as we arrive, and activate the paranoid butler too, I think I might be suffering from an infection." Reaching the medical bay she lay down on the bed and promptly passed out.


	4. interlude 1: recovery and plan

**A/N: hi there, and welcome back to my story. Sorry for the late entry, I would like to say that I had a good excuse for not updating but I don't know if "I was not in the mood" is good enough considering each chapter took about four hours to think out and write. Oh well, here's to my reviewers since last chapter:**

 **DarkDust27: who knows, she just might do that.**

 **Everyone else: thanks for reading, I hope you like this next one. Please, reviews are awesome and there are only two kinds: helpful reviews and trolls. For the helpful reviews thanks a million, for the trolls: no food for you!**

 **Anyway, I digress. ON WITH THE STORY!**

* * *

 **Location: 50,000km from Citadel**

 **Time: 0730 hours GMT**

 **Status: alive, recovering from priority mission**

G9 rolled into the med bay chirruping a worried question as to the status of his master.

"As I said to you the last twenty three times you asked me that question: No I do not know when the master will awaken, all I know is that she had a close call and we were fortunate she did not take any longer to arrive. If she had been any longer she would have died even if she didn't have an infection from that sorry excuse for a bandage.

G9 tweeted out another question, this time about the round she was hit with.

"I could not possibly know what happened! I am neither a combat droid nor am I one of the master's spy drones; I don't know anything about blasters, let alone this new form of firearms. I was neither initially designed to be a medical droid, nor a combat model. All I can do is come up with theories for a medical diagnosis, and those are conjecture at best and a deadly error at worst. In which case, it would not be good to come up with theories that may bring harm to the master."

G9 squealed a derisive comment.

"How rude! I will have you know that my programming was done by the master herself, and I have told the master herself that in order to get medical droid she needs to have me programmed by a medical professional, and even then it would still say she should get an organic medic anyway."

G9 was silent.

"Serves you right, you should not cut down someone just because they do not know the answers you your queries."

After this short exchange both droids were silent.

 **A few hours later.**

The droids perked up, movement registering on their sensors coming from the medical bed their master rested in. the butler droid slowly approached the bed and asked her a question with concern

"How are you feeling master?"

G9 whistled in agreement.

"C9…" opening her eyes as she said this but quickly closed them immediately due to the searing pain that immediately hit her from the bright light, she winced and continued. "C9, dim the lights by thirty percent please."

"Of course master, I am sorry I did not know that the light would agitate the considerable headache you must surely have after your ordeal."

G9 gave a humorous warble at the butler droid.

"Shall I remind you what happened less than an hour ago you tin can?" C9 asked his rude counterpart.

"Stow it C9." She never understood what was between those two. "You asked me something?"

"Sorry master, yes I was inquiring as to your wellbeing, you were on the verge of death for a short time. You appeared to have developed an infection from your rather unsanitary makeshift bandage, although that was not the reason for you near death experience."

"Well, what was it then?" Mirsa asked her droid with a little irritation in her voice.

"The infection was a minor one, something that would have been easily treated with some antibiotics and a bacta patch."

"Yes, yes, but blast it droid what was it that almost killed me!"

Taken aback (and slightly miffed), the droid explained "You seemed to have been exposed to an almost lethal amount of radiation from the puncture wound in your shoulder. We had to submerge you in the bacta tank because we did not know how to treat you. And must I reiterate that you should acquire a real medical professional or a real medical droid before anything worse can occur."

Pausing, Mirsa started to ponder the reason why she might have been poisoned from radiation. It most likely was that Saren had a polonium rounds modification on his weapon. It was also possible that they were from some other radioactive ammunition modification as she was not truly sure she remembered what all the ammo mods there could be.

Thinking of mods brought her to think about her situation again. If she wanted to be sure she would be able to travel and prepare for the coming apocalypse she would need to find a new way to provide power to the ship. She could take advantage of the massive energy potential that eezo had to build an eezo core that could provide enough power for the hyperdrive and sublight engine, but there could also be enough similarities between starship fuel here and starship fuel at home.

"Master, are you there?" the butler/makeshift medical droid asked her.

Being broken out of her thoughts with a rather rude question she replied rather indignantly:

"What do you want?!"

"I have been asking you what is going on; as I do not recognize the star charts in the main database and after the debacle of that infernal space station where you almost died of radiation poisoning, I was hoping you would explain some things to me: One, who shot you in your shoulder; two, how many enemies where there that this happened; three, what you intend to do now; and lastly, did you forget that you had your blasters again?"

Blushing a very red crimson, (which is quite a feat given the blue skin, most of the time it comes out slightly purple) she remembered a very embarrassing habit that she had of forgetting things that are not immediately apparent in the heat of a situation.

"I swear master, one of these days you will forget to bring your shoes on a volcanic planet one of these days, and I will not be treating your feet because of your forgetfulness, maybe that will finally get it to sink in."

"C9," Mirsa started out quietly, "if you do not stop this behavior at once I will personally put you THROUGH THE TRASH COMPACTOR!"

Not taking the hint the droid continued, "and furthermore I-"

A loud sound interrupted the droid as he crumpled to the ground in a heap with a rather sizable hole in his head caused by superheated plasma.

G9 let his pleasure at the turn of events be made known in the form of a recording of cheers and applause.

"Ah, that felt good." The relieved blue spy sighed.

Turning to her favorite droid in the universe with a smile, she asked him

"G9, would you mind disassembling him? I think we need a new butler droid, One with more respect, and a better bedside manner."

G9 gave an affirmative and made his concern on the current situation known.

"I think our next steps would be to ascertain what the chemical content of starship fuel is, acquire a planetary base of operations, gain Intel on movements of the galaxy at large, and try some real food. Not necessarily in that order and those are just a few things that I will do here. First though, I will need to get an update on some things. How is the ship G9? How much fuel do we have?"

G9 gave the bad news on their fuel situation.

"It looks like we will not be able to go anywhere until we get more fuel or something. I guess we now have a new priority. But first things first, I will need a fake identity and landing clearance to get onto the station. We are at the Citadel right?"

G9 replied that they were.

"Good, let's get started."

Getting up from the medical bed she made her way through her ship to her main computer room where she kept her cool programming toys and got to work analyzing some of the data acquired from the Gefjun system relay, specifically Alliance military identity cards, starship IFF codes and military procedures.

 **Later**

After quite a few hours later, Mirsa was getting frustrated with all the technical difficulties of learning a new system of identity forging.

"WHY IS THIS SO ANNOYING!?" she yelled, slamming her fist on the table and then promptly cradling her hurt hand.

G9 having finished disassembling the former piece of tin known as C9-S1 some time ago and had come to assist in his master's efforts, warbled out a laugh and offered some advice.

"No, I ate just before I started this project; however, I think you may be right, so I will go eat something"

Arriving in the kitchen area and opening up can of fruit the blue spy sat down and started to put together a list of priorities.

The first thing needed would be fuel or some alternative power source to power the ship and hyperdrive; of course that would require information on the chemical composition of starship fuel in this galaxy which in turn would require a trip to the Citadel or a fuel station, which also would require the forged identity that was the source of her still stinging hand (not her fault), but that was something for later. Second would be resources: eezo, fuel (if it worked or she could adapt power systems to work), raw materials, technological data and schematics. Third would be a safe and unknown location to set up a base of operations, which she had a lot of potential space to find one in due to the residents of the local galaxy having explored less than a percent of the known galaxy thoroughly so there would be a lot of unknown space that reached beyond what the speed or scanners of FTL ships in service can cover; in short, their space technology level is severely lacking, one small fleet of light cruisers could probably conquer the galaxy in a few years.

Thinking about isolated locations brought back thoughts of resource gathering, the best places would be distant planets and star systems that had resources. It would also be really cool if she could study how eezo formations happen.

But that would have to wait until the higher priority items were acquired, right now though was time to return to building a new identity.

 **Some hours later**

"Yes! It's done!"

A rather loud noise came from the next room in surprise from the sudden exclamation of sheer joy on the part of the intrepid hero at having completed perfecting the process of identification forgery.

A rather perturbed droid rolled in the room with rather indignant exclamations of annoyance from broken concentration.

"Oh stop being such a bore; I am perfectly within my rights to give exclamations of joy when I achieve something of note. This is very important, I will be using this for many years to come, I also had to learn the enough of the local programing language to get this done, and you know how annoying that can be."

Still a little irritated at being started in its work the droid inquired why it was necessary to learn a new programming language to do that.

"Do you think that it would not be noticed if identities were written in a language that was not in existence?"

With a new understanding of the subtleties of spy work the droid rolled out of the computer room.

"I will have to learn this language and more if I want to be more invisible." Mirsa thought out loud.

That would not be the only thing she would need to do. Another thing came to her mind that would be necessary for a good spy network would be contacts and informants, there was only so much one can do with spy drones and Trojan horses and she had an idea that might work really well for a Trojan horse (1). As for contacts a few came to mind that would be useful at a later date. An extra means of resources would be to found a few businesses that would be the basis of the Trojan horse and be semi shell corporations (2).

With a sigh of resolution she said out loud "well, no sense wasting time, let get on with the identity"

Sitting down she thought about what kind of identity that would not attract notice. It would need to be something low key but not someone that would not be able to afford a ship luckily she still had a ship id of a cargo freighter, but that would have to be programed on the standard alliance programming language which should not take too long as she had a template for it with the personal identity program from earlier. It would probably be best and fastest to just forge an identity of a small time cargo captain offloading goods from some planet, probably some farming planet but not Mindoir.

"Mira Vras is a good name. Not that imaginative, but it should do temporarily."

Putting the identity together it turned out like this

 **Vras, Mira**

 **Age 27, born: 12** **th** **Jan 2153**

 **Spire Norwich Hospital, Norwich England, Earth.**

Obviously there was more to it but that would be most of what people would even look at if not more.

Getting up and going to the cockpit she brought the ship just outside probable sensor range and deactivated the ship's cloak.

She was hailed by the station

"please give your identification and await docking instructions"

Doing so resulted in a probably automated reply

"please proceed to docking bay 72, and have a nice day"

A few minutes later after the ship landed on a landing pad (yes a landing pad) she was ready to go.

"Now to get some information."

* * *

(1) "She had an idea that might work really well for a Trojan horse" the idea would be to make a program that would increase processor performance by a good bit but not drastically that would actually work as it said but would send location data as well as data that was specified in certain programmable parameters.

(2) "semi shell corporations" these corporations would serve as an outlet for computer programs, mech export to production facilities at a base of operations as well as sources of income and raw materials that could not be mined and technology that could not be researched alone.

 **A/N:**

 **I apologize for the long wait. I do not think you will have to wait as long for the next chapter, but life is unpredictable therefore it is not a ceratinty.**


End file.
